THE CAUCASUS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7949, 26 January 1906, Page 7

THE CAUCASUS.

Colonel C. B. de la Poer Bereaf ord, late military attache at St. Petersburg, writes in Blackwood's Magazine a lively account of hia recent experiences in the Caucasus. Bis conclusion is that the Russians have a sea of trouble to face ia that as ia othor parts of thoompire. For the insurrection of Tiflis he holds the orders of a uew general commandant to be entirely to blame. This officer deemed it judicious to suppress tho public meetings which hia predecessors had allowed, and his orders acted like oil on lire on a highly nervous people. Meetings took place in defiance of the ordor, and massacres occurred, and now a corps of 40,000 men has been despatched to the scene, and Georgia will probably have to be re-couquered. Colonel Beresford, who speaks with authority, and not as a mere sensa-tion-monger, declaresjthat the fault of the Russian commanding officer nearly everywhere is that he imagines that "the only answer to any popular clamour is the rifle." Colonel Beresford predicts a struggle which will be bitterly intense. His description of the various races in the Caucassian territory is interesting and informing. Tne Armenians are the traders, and they have bten very well treated by the Russians in the past. "When the Kurds drove 80,000 starving Armenians cross the Turkish frontior, the Russians strove bravely to oope with this mass of misery. The Emperor subscribed £200,000 out of his own purse, and as much more was collected in the empire. Having seen their sorrows, Colonel Beresford ia pro-Armenian but he scarcely flatters his proteges. Wherever there is a Kopeck to be earned in the Caucasus the Armenian makes his way. The faying is, "It takes two Russians to get round a Jww, and two Jews to beat an. Armenian." One way or another, it is predicted that the immediate future of this—if of no othtr part of ithe Russian Empire —is likely to be more of tragedy.